Denny's new Las Vegas restaurant puts weddings on the menu

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Denny's, the 24-hour American diner, opened a restaurant on Thursday in Las Vegas with a wedding chapel where couples can tie the knot after a meal of bacon, peanut butter and bananas between two slices of French toast finished off with a bacon vodka chaser.

The restaurant is near the Las Vegas strip on historic downtown Fremont Street. Its modern curves, neon and steel are meant to fit in with the city's "over the top" feel, said Frances Miller, chief marketing officer.

"A normal Denny's is not going to cut it in Vegas," she said, adding that the restaurant is the first of 1,700 Denny's worldwide that will have a wedding chapel and photo booth. It is one of fewer than 50 Denny's with a full bar.

The chapel is scheduled to start hosting nuptials in the first quarter of 2013, with a celebrity wedding slated for February. Details of the wedding were not disclosed.

"I kind of hope it's Kim Kardashian because then you could have repeat performances," architect James Wines quipped at the ribbon cutting.

With this new restaurant, Denny's Corp, based in South Carolina, hopes to capitalize on redevelopment that is underway in the downtown Las Vegas area.

The restaurant's neighbors include a zip line that carries visitors above street-level traffic and a restaurant that holds a Guinness Record for the highest-calorie burger. The area soon expects to have what is being billed as the world's largest gay nightclub.

Miller said that at 6,400 square feet, the Fremont Street Denny's is among the company's 10 largest in the world. She said the restaurant, owned by the parent company instead of being franchised, is also among the most expensive Denny's to build, but she declined to say how much it cost.